Gwyneth Paltrow Explains Why She Took a 7-Year Break From Acting

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jacob Elordi engaged in a wide-ranging conversation for Variety & CNN’s Actors on Actors series.

The Marty Supreme actress, 53, and the Frankenstein star, 28, appeared on the Tuesday, December 9, episode and discussed the moment Paltrow briefly stepped away from acting.

“You took a seven-year break,” Elordi pointed out. “Was that a feeling of ‘I have to get away from this?’”

Paltrow replied, “I felt a lot of loneliness when I was doing it in my 20s. I didn’t know myself well yet, and I was traveling all the time. I needed to grow up and understand who I really was, and I got a lot of those answers through my family. Then I started a business.”

In 2008, Paltrow launched Goop as a weekly wellness and lifestyle newsletter from her kitchen. The company later evolved into a full lifestyle brand, e-commerce site and empire.

While she appeared in various projects like Avengers: Endgame, Marty Supreme is her first major acting role in several years.

“Marty Supreme came about in an incredible way because our boys were going off [to college] and I was left with this feeling of shock and disbelief,” Paltrow — who shares Apple, 21, and Moses, 19, with ex-husband Chris Martin and is stepmom to husband Brad Falchuk’s two children — shared. “Like, ‘Who am I?’ Then I met Josh Safdie and I knew this would be worthwhile. This felt like the movies we used to make in the ‘90s.”

Paltrow and Elordi sat down for Actors on Actors during promotion for their respective new films, Marty Supreme — which will be in theaters on Christmas Day — and Frankenstein — which was released in October.

In a Hollywood Reporter interview published on Wednesday, December 3, Paltrow further explained why she chose to take on her role in Marty Supreme.

“If I’m being completely honest, it’s not that the acting bug had bit,” she shared. “My children, all four of them, had left — Brad and I each have girls and boys the same age, and when I knew the boys were leaving for college, I started to have a real panic around my purpose and where I’m supposed to orient myself: Where do I want to live? Who am I? It was pretty profound.”

She continued: “At the same time, [director] Josh Safdie asked me to be in this movie. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but my brother, Jake, who’s a filmmaker, said to me, ‘You are doing this.’ He was absolutely emphatic about it. Then I found out it was in New York City, and I thought this could be a really interesting thing to do during this transition. I want to be close to the boys, I’ll be closer to the girls.”

After Paltrow signed on to the film, she had some doubts about her return to acting.

“I said yes, and then I was like, ‘Oh f***, do I remember how to do this?’ It had been seven years,” she recalled. “But I didn’t get the bug back until I was on set doing the hair-and-makeup test. That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, what is this weird feeling I’m having? Oh, my God, this is excitement. I’m actually really excited to be here.’”

As for future roles, Paltrow acknowledged she’s received several offers, but she’s “not said yes to anything yet,” adding that if she were to continue acting, she would be “more discerning” about her projects than she was in the past.

Elordi, for his part, previously spoke to Variety in August about his own career choices, telling the outlet at the time, “For me, it’s like, ‘Do I need this every single day? Is this consuming my sleep? Is it everything?’”

Frankenstein, in particular, affected Elordi’s point of view on more than just his work: “It changed me fundamentally — changed the way that I approach performance and the way that I watch movies.”